


Head Games

by veterization



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 22:22:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterization/pseuds/veterization
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter starts messing with Stiles' head when he starts making sexual innuendos and staring at his ass too long. Stiles fights all the implications tooth and nail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head Games

**Author's Note:**

> You know what I love about the Peter/Stiles portion of the fandom? We're clearly a minority ship, so it's like a tiny little family with a tiny little section on Ao3 and a tiny little tag on Tumblr, and everybody makes awesome graphics and fanmixes and stories and earns a reputation for what they contribute. I love it. (◠‿◠✿) 
> 
> This story took forever and I actually broke my rule of writing smut on a class computer because I was really anxious to finish it. 20,000 words isn't too bad, eh?

Nobody tells Stiles that Peter fucking Hale is back. He doesn’t blame anybody—after all, it happens during a time so full of fear and stress that small talk and nightly news updates aren’t exactly abundant, but Stiles still would’ve appreciated the heads up.

The last thing he remembers about Peter is his warm breath on his wrist, fangs growing and ready to bite into vulnerable flesh, and then finding Jackson in a blur of adrenaline and managing to prepare a replica of the Molotov cocktail Lydia made back during that night in the school to hurl at Peter’s arm. It was easy to set fire to a hairy creature with a snout and canines, easy to watch him howl in pain and crumble to the ground before Derek slashed his throat open, even easy to walk away from the scene with a minimal number of nightmares. He has a few, then and now, where he wakes up smelling burning flesh and hears a silky voice in his ear, but he finds comfort in knowing that Peter is good and buried.

Then suddenly he comes soaring out of the rafters to pierce his claws into Jackson, very much alive, and Stiles feels like he’s seeing ghosts.

Scott gives him the abridged version the next day, Stiles much too emotionally drained to consider dealing with resurrected werewolves, the same Alpha werewolf responsible for murdering half the damn town because he couldn’t control his temper and had a vendetta that spurred it on. Scott doesn’t even know all the details, like how the hell Peter managed to cheat death or why Derek is all right with keeping him around, but the long and short of it is that the guy is now a zombie werewolf. It absolutely terrifies Stiles to think of the same man who had Lydia’s blood dribbling from his mouth is somehow walking on the same earth as he is once more.

If Stiles would have it his way, he’d lock himself into his room for the duration of the summer or maybe start spontaneously studying abroad in a tiny island where there was no threat of werewolves, maybe just a friendly sasquatch or two, and say goodbye to his James Bond life of continuously risking his own hide for the sake of his best friend and a few people he never originally signed up for taking responsibility for. Naturally, things don’t go as planned.

He promises to help, partly out of curiosity and partly out of a stupid loyalty he has to Scott to throw himself knee-deep in any shit Scott’s in as well just so they can figure out how to get out of the mud together. He’s actually fairly good at research and isn’t too bad with coming up with clever plans both ahead of time and impulsively, a fact that Derek’s picked up on even if it personally pains him to ask for help. He eventually hears about it through the grapevine from Scott, who hears from Isaac about the mysterious Alpha pack sigils on the Hale House door and how Derek’s only plan is to kill or terrorize anybody who threatens his territory, and that’s how Stiles finds himself involved once more.

They’re all over at the Hale House staring at the sigil drawn in angry black on the desecrated door when Stiles catches his first glimpse of Peter that isn’t through the shadows, and it’s still enough to make him want to piss himself even though Peter doesn’t have the extra threatening Alpha bonuses of red eyes and the ability to transform into a hairy monster three times the size of Stiles anymore. He’s got a precisely shaven beard now, just a hint of artistic stubble around his mouth and chin, and a dab of sass Stiles had never seen before. Resurrection has been good to him, and Stiles doesn’t know what the hell to think about that.

 

\--

 

Facial hair. 

Of all the things to come back to life with, of all things to maintain during try number two at the game of life, facial hair is not what Stiles had anticipated out of Peter Hale. Maybe a vendetta to be the Alpha again, or a plan to go on another murder spree that terrorizes the town, or attempt to get Scott into their own pack of Omegas. The sudden mustache and line of a goatee down his chin make it seem like he's actually taking care of himself, something he probably hasn't put true personal effort in since before the coma, and it makes Stiles wonder what his motives are.

Nobody trusts Peter. Not Derek, who snipes at the guy every chance he gets like the only thing keeping him from hurling Peter into the nearest wall is the level of usefulness his comments reach, and Peter knows how to play to his advantage by staying perpetually elusive about his knowledge like there’s always a bigger picture he’s working up to. Derek, apparently, is just as curious as Stiles and is just as hungry for information, so he refrains from the bodily harm. Scott tries to avoid the guy at all cost and Isaac doesn’t even know what to think considering he missed out on some of the lovely firsthand experiences Scott and Stiles both had with the guy back when he was the Big Bad Alpha. Stiles absorbs most of their opinions and tries to keep his distance from Peter as well, all too much remembering the monster that very much exists under his skin as a dormant instinct, but somehow Stiles finds it almost difficult to make connections from the guy before his death to the guy standing in front of him now, with a sense of unparalleled humor and smooth, cultivated hair.

He keeps thinking about the night when he saw the beast intermingled with the man firsthand, the night he was on all fours on the lacrosse field with Lydia's bleeding body between him and Peter, the first time he had contact with the guy since Derek told him to duck and scramble for an exit in the hospital. Before then, he had been simple, the label "the guy who had turned Scott," and after that he was "the guy with the burns on his face and on his morality" and then he became "the guy who Stiles set on fire and helped put in his grave."

He remembers the feeling of Peter's breath on his face like it was yesterday if he closes his eyes, the way he hovered over him and dug his claws into the underside of his chin. They were sharp like needles and threatened to break the skin of his jaw, so Stiles went along with it up until Peter held his wrist in the parking garage and brushed this thumb over the vein there as an offering to turn him, to recruit him for his pack and to become an equal with Scott. Stiles is thinking about that moment over and over, because he can't figure out why he didn't pull his wrist back sooner.

Stiles learns pretty quickly with werewolves that can tell when he's lying but don't offer him the same advantage of using a lie detector machine that he has to rely on other skills, like body language. He starts telling when Scott's uncomfortable because he's layering books in front of his chest or even when Derek's lying. And then, completely by accident, he learns about himself, and how vulnerable the wrist is, and what a sign of trust it is to display it openly. The arms protect, the things that keep the ribs from pain and save the heart from mortal blows, and when they're pulled aside willingly it's a clear sign of trustworthiness. The inside of the wrist, where the veins and the blood run, the most vulnerable spot of the body, and Stiles let Peter run his fingers and extend his fangs over his for quite a few minutes. 

He wonders if his inner desire to be a strong, mighty werewolf is really that strong, or if he's secretly just much too curious about Peter Hale.

 

\--

 

This is the weirdest situation Stiles has ever been in his life, and that includes the day he happened to be eating dinner with the McCalls the day Scott’s parents unceremoniously announced their divorce while Stiles buried himself firmly in his soup and refused to accept the reality around him.

He’s standing in the kitchen of the Hale house peeling potatoes by the sink while next to him, Peter is chopping them into meticulous tiny dices like this is a thing they do, stand in the kitchen and go about domestic chores in unison, and Stiles doesn’t even know how it happened.

It’s definitely strange to be within three feet of Peter and not feel imminently threatened. He remembers the parking garage and how Peter was a constant warning looming over him telling him that if he wanted to survive to see his own graduation he better hack into Scott’s phone’s GPS like a technical genius in under five minutes. Peter symbolized murder and blood and a pulse beating a rapid tattoo against his neck faster than any heartbeat he picks up after running suicide runs for Finstock, the very personification of fear built into a person slash monster. And now here he is, like a man stuck in a hostage situation who comes out with a newfound appreciation of life and the people in it, somebody completely changed by a few weeks in a dingy makeshift grave underneath his house. Stiles almost wants to ask questions, but ultimately doesn’t. It’s just too strange.

“You don’t have to be so tense, Stiles,” Peter mentions nonchalantly while halving a potato. “It’s not like I’m going to jump and attack you the moment you let your guard down.”

He gives Stiles a smug sideways look, like he can smell every emotion Stiles ever carries on himself, and it unnerves the hell out of him. Stiles fumbles a bit with the peeler and has no idea how to converse properly with a revived werewolf.

“Is it the new look?” Peter ventures, a hand going up from the pile of potatoes to rub at the dark stubble accumulated around his mouth. “I’m trying something different.”

“The beard’s fine,” Stiles dismisses. “It’s more of the… rising from the dead that has me stumped.”

Peter looks him over a little. His gaze hasn’t gotten any less creepy. “Hmmm,” he says, and for a moment Stiles thinks he’s about to give him a technical explanation of how one goes about reviving themselves, but then he smiles and rubs at his chin once more. “I like the beard, too. Careful with the peeler.”

The blade slices over his thumb and draws blood in its wake, a sharp line that oozes a drop of tiny crimson blood dotted on his fingertip. Stiles drops the peeler into the sink and is about to run the cut under the faucet when suddenly Peter's hands, pruned from the potatoes, reaches out to grab his palm and lead it toward his mouth. Stiles instantly gets flashbacks to the night in the garage, the way he dug his nails into his forearm and breathed over his wrist as wordless temptation, and Stiles has half a mind to yank his arm back into the safety of his body when Peter wraps his lips around his thumb and his tongue slides over the blood. He sucks it dry and licks it clean, and just like that he releases Stiles' fingers and lets his hand linger in the air like it's perfectly normal to lick the blood clean off of somebody else's appendages. Stiles doesn't think that any part of today has been perfectly normal, from the preparing dinner with Peter Hale to having Peter Hale suck on his finger like a thirsty vampire, and he refuses to think more about its implications.

 

\--

 

Stiles spends more nights than planned in the Hale house the next few weeks. He keeps using the excuse that he's "helping Scott study," which his father believes. A part of Stiles wishes he wouldn't.

Derek never thanks him for all of his insomnia, which fortunately, Stiles doesn't expect. He doesn't always understand how Derek is the one with the trust issues and the burnt emotional capacity and Peter's the one with the jokes, but Stiles has long given up on trying to understand this family.

He learns things he really never wanted to learn, things that Stiles will have trouble accepting as reality when he returns from the state of sleep-deprivation he's been dozing in. Peter's computer is full of information that doesn't have to be decoded from Latin, information that will probably haunt Stiles' nightmares. He's supposed to be looking for history on alpha packs—what are their purposes, what are their weakness—but he ends up learning about all sorts of werewolf lore and torture techniques that are wonderfully illustrated with diagrams that have engraved themselves into Stiles' brains to never be erased.

He's currently draped over a textbook that's missing its first half plus cover due to fire damage and attempting to decipher what vital information the first two hundred pages shared that make the last two hundred feel like garbled nonsense, careful not to perturb the charred spine that looks like the slightest breath will turn it to ashes. Researching without Google, however, means that there isn't a bright light from his laptop to keep him awake, and next thing he knows he's collapsed in the middle of "lycanthropy in France" and is being nudged awake.

When he blinks the sleep out of his eyes and doesn't see the frayed hem of his bed's pillow but rather Peter's amused face kneeling by him through the shadows, he has a small panic attack and ends up peeling his face from the pages must faster than intended. He's pretty sure he loses most of the skin of his cheek in the process and there's a smell of lingering smoke in Stiles' nose that he assumes is embedded into the pages.

"That looks comfortable," Peter says in regards to Stiles' creative sleeping position. He's bent like a pretzel over the desk just to have a nap on a poor facsimile for a pillow, and honestly, these are the things he does for the people in his life.

"How long have you been there?" Stiles asks, slightly disgruntled as he wipes his mouth clean and smacks the taste of sleep from his mouth. The house is bathed in darkness and the chill of night and Stiles' bed is calling him all the way from home even if the idea of driving through the preserve in the middle of night in his rickety Jeep is not exactly an appealing thought.

Peter edges the book out from Stiles' arms and gently shuts it before whipping a cup of coffee out of nowhere and handing it to Stiles, who wraps his fingers around the proferred beverage and swallows it with no consideration for his tongue, which burns on the spot. He swallows down the pain and the bitterness of what is clearly an all black coffee with absolutely no flavor. He can't drink this even if he does need all the caffeine his body can contain right now if he wants to stay awake to get anything out of his research, which starts posing questions like how tremendous his grade would be right now if he only put half the amount of effort he puts into learning about werewolves and keeping Scott alive into school work.

"Relax, I just got here," Peter says with a look like watching people nap is too _Twilight_ even for his standards."Did you even eat dinner?"

"Don't even really remember it being dinner time," Stiles says, fumbling through his jacket pocket for his phone. It flashes, much too bright, the neon numbers _12:43_. "Did Derek make dinner while I was sleeping?"

Peter snorts elegantly. "Derek, make dinner?" He picks up the coffee cup Stiles has shown absolutely no interest in and takes a casual sip. The way he can swallow the veritable sewage slush steaming inside is a mystery to Stiles. "Absolutely not."

Slumber seems to ooze from every one of Peter's words, luring Stiles back into thinking that the desk is a perfectly adequate napping spot. His stomach, however, rumbles its complaints, and Stiles will bet good money that there isn't a single midnight snack in this entire house. Peter's hands are suddenly on his shoulders, leaning in.

"Do you want to go to my bed?" Peter suddenly murmurs to Stiles, low and husky, and Stiles' eyes snap open before this reaches questionable territory.

“ _What_?”

“I asked,” Peter says again, enunciating. “Do you want some bread?”

Stiles looks down to where he’s holding out a basket of only slightly stale buns of bread through the shadows and wearing a wickedly amused smirk. Stiles could swear he heard _bed_ and what sounded like a very blatant suggestion laced with some very blatant sexual undertones, but he's tired and Peter's face is swimming before him and he doesn't have the energy to whack Peter over the head when yes, he does actually want a piece of bread.

 

\--

 

Stiles walks with a fast purpose to his car, the gravel crunching underneath him telling him to go _faster_ , _faster_ , _faster_. He's got a bat in his hands because he's taken a leaf out of the McCall family book, but that's the extent of his weaponry tonight, which probably isn't the smartest idea considering that whenever he gets a panicked text from Scott with no sense of capitalization he knows that there's danger awaiting. His Jeep, nestled underneath a low-hanging branch of an overgrown tree, blinks its headlights through the bushes when Stiles unlocks it. 

Then suddenly there's a twig snapping behind him, the telltale horror movie sign that he's about to be violently murdered, and Stiles whips around with his bat akimbo ready to helplessly strike, when—

There's a flailing of limbs in which all Stiles sees is his own arms desperately attempting to shield his vital organs, and then there's a hand over his mouth trying to quell his squealing and Stiles sees that he's not being kidnapped, he's just being manhandled against his car by Peter Hale.

He groans and pushes Peter's arm off, which thankfully, goes without protest. He waits for the possibility of a heart attack to dwindle as his heartbeat pounds against his neck like frantic deer galloping across his shoulder and smoothes the wrinkles of struggle out of his clothing. 

"What the hell?!" Stiles demands in the best hushed whisper he can use that still conveys his anger without waking the neighborhood. "Is it so bad to just call somebody's name and wave rather than scare the pants off them?"

"You're exaggerating," Peter drawls, hardly amused, and proceeds to move Stiles away from the car so he can casually crawl into the passenger seat like he somehow belongs there. Stiles blinks after him as he watches him settle into the car and buckle up, completely befuddled at the sight of Peter wandering into the car like Stiles agreed to drive him around. He's definitely not Peter's chauffeur.

"What are you doing?" Stiles asks instantly, lowering his bat and tossing it into the backseat. He's wasting valuable time that should be used hustling to whatever trouble Scott has become entangled in, and he certainly doesn't have the time to indulge in whatever Peter's here for. "Get out of my car."

"Relax, I'm headed the same place as you," Peter says, showing no signs of leaving. "Derek texted me asking for help." When Stiles still looks unconvinced, he rolls his eyes and stares at him. "This won't be like the last time we rode in a car together."

Stiles is half tempted to ask for proof. He wavers on the spot, watching as Peter starts fiddling with the radio, and wonders if it'd be more beneficial if he just gave in now rather than start a squabble. He cautiously heads for the driver's door and slides in, swatting Peter's hand away from the radio as he starts the car and heads for the corner of town.

This, Stiles thinks, is definitely not the way the last time being in a car with Peter Hale went down. Driving them both to the edge of town where Derek and Scott have supposedly found a clue because Peter so inconveniently needed a ride and Stiles just so conveniently happened to be there is not what he signed up for when he woke up this morning and had plans to take a shower and pretend to study for math and waste a few hours on his laptop. As much as he’s comfortable nowadays saying no to Peter Hale, Stiles can still acknowledge what everybody else begrudgingly has: he’s incredibly useful and always has his finger on the pulse, so maybe him coming along won't be too painful mentally or physically as long as there aren't any more dead bodies in the trunk.

The detour to Dairy Queen, however, is not what Stiles expected.

They have a brief glaring match over the console in which Peter idly threatens to flatten one of Stiles’ tires with a claw if Stiles doesn't pull over for a chocolate milkshake and Stiles ultimately gives and swerves into the drive through. And then there he is, enunciating an order much too complicated into a tinny speaker while the bored voice on the other end adds up his total.

“That is _not_ a chocolate milkshake,” Stiles complains when Peter rattles off a beverage he’s never heard of before.

“Relax,” Peter says breezily, “I’m paying.”

“That’s not—” Stiles lets out a string of unintelligible curse words under his breath before he sticks his head out the window again and grits out his order. “A mocha moolatte with caramel and extra whip, please.”

Ten minutes later Stiles is shoving Peter’s drink in his hands and moodily tonguing the straw of his iced tea after Peter had delicately charmed the drive-through waitress into giving him extra chocolate syrup with a silken voice that made Stiles want to retch over his window, wondering exactly how much time they wasted waiting for an iced drink to be blended and decorated.

“Who on earth taught you how to use a straw?” Peter says next to him, sounding amused, and Stiles untangles his mouth from his straw to consider the question. He’s a hyperactive boy and his mouth likes to keep busy, so what? Peter’s eyes trail from the straw to Stiles’ mouth and Stiles quickly turns his attention back to the road.

"Stop staring at my mouth," Stiles tells him with a straightforward frown, sipping more iced tea before shoving it into the cup holder and making another turn. He figures that he has to deal with Peter like a puppy that hasn't been trained yet, with firm voices and stern faces. His phone's GPS is highlighting a yellow line leading where the address Scott texted him is and he's trying to focus on the tiny screen while keeping aware of the road plus the slurping sounds coming from the passenger seat. He can't multitask that much.

"Where should I stare, then?" Peter says, and Stiles doesn't need to look at him to hear the smirk. He wishes he could pull over and pitch the guy out of his seat to sit in shame on the side of the road, but he's never had much luck with ejecting werewolves from his car.

"Do you know what Derek's found?" Stiles asks, veering the conversation back on track to something potentially useful. "A gypsy camp, maybe?"

Stiles snickers around his own straw for a moment at his own moment of genius, his moment promptly interrupted when Peter snorts eloquently from the passenger seat. The fact that he's holding a drink complete with chocolate swirls and whipped cream that stretches past the dome removes some of the heat behind his derision.

" _The Wolf Man_ reference? Really?"

"What, you're too good for werewolf movies because you're a werewolf?" Stiles asks. He still can't wrap his head around the fact that last time they were in a car, Stiles had sweat trickling down his forehead and his arms and even his ankles and Peter was casually telling him to drive faster because there were responsible people to kill and nephews to find, and now they're bantering about cinema. "Lon Chaney Jr. is amazing."

"Lon Chaney Jr. is fine," Peter dismisses breezily with a wave of his hand. "I didn't even mind the other guy—what was his name? The rigid father who doesn't believe in werewolves until he actually kills one?"

"How many times have you seen this movie?" Stiles asks skeptically, still trying to juggle the phone on his knee and the conversation simultaneously.

"Just a few. It really amuses me to see Hollywood butcher lycanthropy lore," Peter says with an amused grin, shaking his head before licking a generous dollop of whipped cream off the top of his beverage. He sticks his finger into it and licks it off with a pink tongue that darts out of his mouth to curl around the cream, and that's when Stiles almost drives off the road into the ditch. He rights the car just before they go gracelessly tumbling into the undergrowth and pretends that there was a woodland creature scampering across the road that caused the momentary lapse of attentive driving.

"Maybe next time they do a movie we'll invite Spielberg out here to gather information about werewolves," Stiles says around a mouthful of sarcasm. Some people mind sarcasm, but whenever Stiles uses it around Peter he feels like he's using Peter's native language.

"Do you think we can afford having the world know all of our secrets?"

" _Our_ secrets?" Stiles parrots.

"Even if you're not a werewolf, some people would probably call you a threat with all that knowledge you've accumulated over the years," Peter answers with a shrug. "Even if some of it came from Google and is glaringly wrong."

"What exactly was I supposed to do, put out flyers looking for werewolves to come tell me their ways?" Stiles asks, memory flitting back to the day he printed out every single article filled with lycanthropy lore he found on the internet to shove in Scott's face as proof. He will admit that some of it was ridiculous, but he won't give Peter the satisfaction of knowing that the internet had mainly failed him on his quest to shine some light on the mysterious creature his best friend had become. 

"I could always teach you," Peter says. "I'm sure there's lots of things you have yet to know about werewolves."

It's innocent enough, but everything Peter says sounds like a lewd suggestion that he's waiting for Stiles to pick up on. Stiles feels the insides of his palms dampen on the steering wheel as he starts wondering exactly how much he _doesn't_ know about werewolves, like if they like to eat sixteen-year-old boys for lunch or if they've ever infiltrated the Olympics with their supernatural strength or if sex feels ten times better. The tinny voice inside his phone's GPS orders Stiles to take a right to reach his final destination, a welcome distraction from the conversation, and he swerves off the road to land directly in a leaf-strewn path winding into the woods, the headlights illuminating a smattering of browned undergrowth and skinny tree trunks littered into the distance. He realizes dryly that this is as far as the GPS is willing to take him off the beaten path, the highlighted line of the road forgotten as he stares ahead into a desolate serpentine path leading deeper into the heart of the woods.

"Think about it, Stiles," Peter says before he slides open the door and heads down the muddy path, Stiles following him if only to avoid getting lost. Underneath him, the leaves crunch, and this time they sound like they're saying _wrong, wrong, wrong_ because all Stiles can think of is the way Peter wrapped his mouth around the his cream-covered finger.

 

\--

 

"Claude Rains," a voice that sounds too much like Peter says through the phone. Stiles is staring at his pantry looking for the barbecue chips from last night's Halo marathon that he hopes Scott didn't decide to adopt and take home with him, but he instinctively whips around to stare at his kitchen as if expecting Peter to be in the corner to catch Stiles unawares. He's not there, which is a relief, because his dad's in the living room watching CSI.

"What?"

"Claude Rains was the actor from _Wolf Man_. The stiff-necked father."

“ _What_? You mean—” Stiles asks, sticking his head into the cupboard again. "That conversation from my Jeep?"

"Yes, I just remembered."

Stiles takes a moment to pull back and glance at his phone. The screen doesn't say "unknown." It says, very clearly, _Peter_ , a name and number he most definitely did not program in himself. His phone, his safe haven, his connection to Scott and the police and the place he plays Temple Run in bed at night, has betrayed him by allowing a serial killer werewolf to add himself to Stiles' contacts.

"When did you have my phone?" Stiles grits out. Sometimes he feels like talking to Peter is like dealing with a child. A morbid, bloodthirsty child that has the capability to eat him as lunch.

"It was lying on your desk in plain sight without password protection," Peter says, like that justifies it. It's definitely rapist logic.

"Stiles, did you find the chips?" his dad hollers from the living room. It reminds Stiles that he's on the phone with a criminal while his sheriff father lounges on a couch a few feet away, which is exactly the type of malarkey he wants to cut down on to stop growing the Pinocchio nose every time he talks to his dad about his day.

"Just a second, dad!" Stiles covers the receiver to no avail. Stupid werewolves and their stupid super hearing. He needs to start hanging out with a better crowd with absolutely no supernatural skills. "Peter, this is the last phone call you ever make to me, okay?"

"Is that your father," Peter asks, sounding positively gleeful. Stiles isn't going down this road.

"I'm not going down this road," Stiles hisses. He finally locates the chips hiding behind a box of popcorn that must've been decomposing in the pantry for at least half a decade, but now he has more pressing matters at hand, like how to get the werewolf off the phone without accidentally luring him to his house because he hung up too early.

"You make it seem like everything I say is a threat," Peter says, and Stiles can smell the smirk through the hurt even through the tinny reception. He has half a mind to hang up now, stuff his phone in his pocket, and just make sure all the windows are locked.

" _You_ are a threat," Stiles tells him. There's the sound of a car chase coming from the television wafting into the kitchen. Stiles is totally missing the good part and he can only hold the chips hostage for so long before his dad starts to investigate what's taking Stiles so long to find a few snacks. "Did you even call for a reason?"

"I told you," Peter says petulantly. "To tell you about Claude Rains."

"Right. Got it. Good piece of trivia if I'm ever on Jeopardy," Stiles says, bouncing up and down on his feet as he waits for the phone call to reach its end. Peter seems to sense the discomfort radiating through the phone and tuts at his poor social manners to keep a conversation afloat.

"What, I'm not allowed to check in?"

"No, it's creepy," Stiles says right away. He calls Scott now and again, and even Derek's number is in his phone to be used purely for emergencies, but frequently calling Derek's crazy uncle just to merrily rehash the events of the day is too weird for his brain to actively accept. "You realize we're not actually friends, right?"

"What are you wearing?" is what Peter finds appropriate to ask instead of conceding to Stiles' rhetorical question.

Stiles looks down at his hoodie, jeans, and tearing socks sporting some spectacular holes. He really needs new socks. "Three layers of thermal sweaters, ski pants, and Hugh Hefner's robe, what's it to you?" He rattles off.

"Clever," Peter snipes. "Your dad wants his chips. You should get them to him."

And then he hangs up like it's his right to hang up first even though Stiles has been looking forward to doing the honors himself to make a statement ever since he first picked up. The phone beeps in his ear as the call ends, yet another reminder that Peter probably won this round. He's not sure how many rounds there will be for Stiles to redeem himself and leave that leering son of a bitch speechless with his sharp wit, or even what the game is. If there is a game of wills and mind power at work here, then Stiles is _not_ playing.

"I'm _not_ playing," Stiles tells resolutely to the blank phone before stuffing it into his pocket.

"Stiles! Get out of the damn kitchen closet before you find Narnia and bring the chips!" His dad hollers, and that's the last Stiles lets himself fume about that.

 

\--

 

After a day where Stiles has a shitload of physics homework—none of it actually useful to the path his life is taking, that path being spending all of his free time aiding his supernatural friends in escaping danger they may or may not soon be in—all he wants to soothe his fried brain is to grab a handful of fruit roll-ups from the kitchen and curl up in his sheets to take a nap that stretches into dinnertime. What he gets instead, however, is Peter Hale sitting in his room occupying his desk chair with a box of crackers he's clearly pilfered from the kitchen in his lap.

"What are you doing here," Stiles asks, and is only slightly surprised. It's definitely an improvement on his jumpiness, but not on anybody else's parts to stop breaking and entering into his home and loitering illegally around his house. He drops his backpack and tries not to feel too offended about the crackers until he sees that Peter's rifling casually through the scraps of notes and forgotten homework strewn across his desktop. He thinks he might need to establish some boundaries before somebody like his father comes traipsing into his room and Stiles has to make up more Spanish names on the fly to protect the identity of the various creatures that lurk about his room uninvited.

"You just don't find these snacks in my house," Peter says ruefully around a mouthful of cracker as he pops another one into his mouth. All he needs is his feet propped up on Stiles' desk and he'd be as comfortable as can be in Stiles' personal space.

"No, but you do in grocery stores," Stiles says, but he lacks the bravado to take the box of crackers back into his own custody and wrench them out of Peter's grip. He decides to take the same approach he took with Derek a year ago and ignore the extra presence in his room and continue going about with his daily routine under the vain hope that Peter will be discouraged by the lack of attention. He definitely doesn't feel safe enough to start sleeping on the bed with his back turned to Peter, but he can get started on that mountain of physics homework, so he sidles onto his bed and yanks his notebooks out of his backpack to start analyzing the endless lines of equations and formulas he has to memorize for next week's quiz that he still isn't grasping the concept of.

"Struggling?" Peter says from where he's swiveled over to face Stiles. He looks entirely too smug sitting in Stiles' furniture, like it's his right to belong there amid Stiles' trinkets and his room and his life, and Stiles ignores him valiantly until he scoots over to the bed to peer over his shoulder at his scrawled notes.

"Did you need something?" Stiles grits out. He has half a mind to take Peter on a tour of the house and deliberately show him all of the official police enforcement weapons stored away for his father's peace of mind. He doesn't know why werewolves always think the safest place to hide out is the sheriff's house, but Stiles wouldn't exactly mind if his father came upstairs right now to apprehend the man close enough to have Stiles memorize the smell of his shampoo.

"Just being helpful," Peter says around a toothy grin. "Maybe you'd have better luck understanding all this if you didn't spend your class time drawing badgers in the margins."

He runs a finger down the artistic corners of Stiles' notes, filled with scribbled pen drawings of sundry woodland animals. Stiles didn't exactly ask for a handful of sass, so he tunes out all the opinions coming from his left and fixedly ignores the fact that there's a steady waft of pleasant aftershave coming his way every few seconds. He stares at the equations, who stare back, and attempts the first problem on his homework without succumbing to the pressure of Peter staring over his shoulder.

"You wrote the equation down incorrectly," Peter murmurs after three minutes, like he just can't help himself. "The equation for an electric field is E equals F over q."

Stiles looks down to where he's scribbled something that looks much more like a few stick figures than E equals F over q. He hates it when Peter's right. He erases the scrawls and writes the equation down correctly while wondering when on earth Peter made it his goal to become his science tutor. He still remembers the man who manhandled him against the trunk of a car and threatened him to break into Scott's phone. It wasn't that long ago, a single winter ago when Stiles was focused on wearing the right button down to impress Lydia at a high school dance. That was back when he was convinced that he could still enjoy luxuries like living an average high schooler's life.

"Is that why you're here? To improve my grades?" Stiles asks suspiciously. Just like Disney villains, Peter always has something up his sleeve. If his history has proven anything, it's that evil hearts can't be cured with a few magical epiphanies, even though this is the first time Stiles has ever encountered a resurrection. Who knows what that can do for a heart.

"Did you know that an electric field is a region of space surrounding a charged particle within which a force can affect and move to other objects as well?" Peter says like he's swallowed a textbook, looking thoroughly pleased with himself when Stiles raises his eyebrows at him. His voice softens and his eyes flicker down to Stiles' lips. "Much like you, Stiles. There's not a single person who doesn't feel electrocuted just standing next to you."

Stiles has no idea what that means. "Is that a compliment?"

"It's a scientific concept," Peter says softly, but his gentle tone is contrasted with a grin that could be likened to a shark's. Suddenly there's a hand on his knee, inching up his thigh, and Peter is whispering, "It's not hard, is it?"

Stiles' leg jumps at the feeling of soft nails raking up his leg, tickling the nerves that are shooting up straight to his dick, and does Peter honestly think he's being funny with all of these offhand innuendos? Peter retreats his hand back to his own lap, positively leering like the wolf who just ate Little Red, and digs his hand back into the box of crackers.

"I'll be taking these with me, yes?" Peter says, waving the box around, and Stiles is too flustered to take his snacks back before Peter nonchalantly heads out the front door like he's not even afraid of being caught by the Sheriff on the way.

 

\--

 

It really isn't Stiles' fault. He's seventeen and hormonal and could get turned on while vacuuming. If all those instructional pamphlets written by elderly women to appease the prepubescent youth who are confused by their body's urges have anything to say, it's totally normal that Stiles needs a release now and again and his hand just happens to offer its services. It's not the masturbation part that he's actually ashamed of.

It's more who he's masturbating to.

It started out so innocently, with Stiles getting into the shower and lathering up his shampoo and getting interested under the spray of the warm water, so he let his mind wander. He thought of Lydia, of how beautiful she looked the night she was in his room crying about Jackson, about how Stiles could smell waves of her perfume on his sheets for days, about how Stiles tried not to stare at the curve of her cleavage but the soft expanse of her chest drew in some glances anyway. Lydia's always worked for him, gotten him turned on in class and helped him finish in five seconds flat. There's nothing about her that Stiles wouldn't like to touch and worship should he get the chance, from her tiny stomach to her creamy shoulders to her small hands.

This time, though, something goes wrong. There he is, minding his own business in the shower when suddenly thoughts of Peter flit through his mind like somebody requested they be there and be acknowledged at the most inopportune time possible. The hand that's stroking his cock stutters and Stiles opens his eyes even though the water rushes in and shocks his eyelids, because why? Why would his brain start thinking about Peter when he's jerking off?

He's sure it's not actually that hard to work out. Psychologists would have a field day in the jumbled pandemonium that is Stiles' brain right now, especially in the way he's trying valiantly to deny ever having considered Peter in a sexual manner. He thinks that Peter probably has with him if the little coy ways he's been staring at Stiles and making offhand innuendos are any indication, but Stiles has always tried his best to brush those off and not appear phased. He supposes that Peter is like the little bully in kindergarten who's only entertained as long as he gets contributory responses to his pranks and cruelty, except instead of tugging pigtails and throwing mulch he's trying to get Stiles as uncomfortable as possible with idly mentioning sex in various allegedly innocent ways.

It does make Stiles wonder if he'd ever go through with all of his sly proposals of going to bed and blowing Stiles in the backseat of his car, like Stiles agreeing to letting him manhandle him onto a wall or desk or table and allow him to have his way with Stiles in ways Stiles' wet dreams probably didn't even envision might shake Peter's confidence a bit. He could imagine Peter being experienced if all his talk is worth anything, that he'd throw Stiles onto the nearest horizontal surface and wouldn't let him come up for air without having ravished him from head to toe first, that he'd use his tongue and his teeth and maybe even let his claws brush over his backside to get Stiles aroused and alarmed all at once. If he'd kiss him he'd use scrapes of teeth and domineering pushes of his tongue, or if he'd let Stiles get on top just to watch him ride his cock and do all the work while Peter rocked up into him.

He wonders how Peter would kiss, if it'd be with the same intensity as how he looks at Stiles, or if he'd draw blood with human teeth and let Stiles taste the metallic tang in his mouth. Maybe he'd be slow and torturous instead, frustratingly gentle if only to hear Stiles beg for more. Stiles would match his aggression with his own, be just as rough and just as unrelenting if Peter wants to be challenged. He could be a challenge.

His hand curls around his dick, thoroughly interested and leaking under the spray of the warm water, closing his eyes as his mind wanders. The water makes his hand slide smoothly up and down his length, the leftover suds slicking the way and, if he pretends hard enough, making his fingers feel like a foreign hand. He grips harder and twists on the upstroke because Peter wouldn't play nicely, he'd be unyielding in his touches and string Stiles along for the ride while he would try desperately to keep up. He never knew he liked it rough, always expected himself to enjoy simple sex as long as there were two willing bodies involved, but now his brain is concentrating on the rough pull of his palm and how it'd feel to be manhandled into submission that he'd want just as much, how he'd groan for Peter and then repay the favor and force just as many noises out of him. He loves the idea of Peter panting underneath him, pulled apart with every tantalizing lick and suck like he's finally truly powerless under Stiles' vulnerably human touch, like the roles have finally switched and Stiles is the one to fear and revere.

The shower pounds on his back, the noise of the water swallowing all of the gasps and grunts that slip from his throat. His hand speeds up, wrist flicking and finger thumbing over the head of his dick to brush away the precome gathering there. If Peter was right here, right now, Stiles would be pressed up against the cool tile trying to rut his cock against the shower wall for relief while Peter would be teasing him mercilessly behind him, fangs sliding over the nape of his neck and fingers kneading at his ass. He'd never relent, never give up, constantly be coming up with new ingenious ways to leave Stiles guessing about what's coming next, and Stiles would let him experiment to see what he likes best. Maybe he'd like it if Peter left deep marks down his neck to claim him for himself, and maybe he'd like it if Peter focused on his mouth, kissing him for hours with tiny nips and sucks that would leave Stiles' mouth so swollen he'd come out sounding like he just finished dental surgery.

Stiles whimpers, his own imagination leaving him frantically wanting more, like a real touch, real fingers clawing down his body. His hand speeds up, squeezing harder as it slides up and down his cock and twists from the base to the tip, fingers slipping urgently as the water drips down his hips. The water intensifies it, making him pant that much harder, and he comes two seconds later to the thought of Peter taking his cock into his mouth and lapping his tongue up the underside of his dick.

His orgasm comes hard, but the epiphany that he wants Peter Hale comes much harder, and Stiles is left shaking under a cold spray of water watching his come swirl down the drain as a souvenir of his shame. In the afterglow, his mind feels like a filthy cavern and his hands feel like instruments of a deed worth hiding under the bed along with the dust and the mothballs, and Stiles instinctively whips around the bathroom as if expecting Scott and his father and Derek to have all materialized just to be ashamed of what swims around in the dark depths of Stiles' mind. He turns off the water and has to admit that he's at least grateful there aren't sheets to be laundered as the repercussions of his masturbating, not to mention that no matter how sharp his werewolf senses are or how creative his supernatural powers are, Peter will never, ever know exactly what happened here tonight in Stiles' shower.

 

\--

 

Sometimes Stiles dreams of fires that are enveloping him whole, licking up his body like ruthless ants pricking his skin and burning his muscle. The flames are dreamlike, too hot on his skin but surreal, like a pain that his body just can't touch or envision that still aches and stings nonetheless. He tries to fight it, twisting helplessly in the circle of fire that surrounds him and chases his ankles, the smell of burnt hair and burnt skin pushing up his nostrils, like a Thanksgiving turkey left smoking in the oven too long or when five-year-old Stiles caught his scraggly hair in the flame of a flickering candle and the stink of crisped strands of hair hung in the air. It's smoky and hot and burning his eyes even though Stiles intrinsically knows that he has to keep aware or risk losing more than just his eyesight. There's a scream behind him and he's whipping around, and suddenly it's not just him in the fire, it's his entire family, his mother shrieking in the corner and his father nothing but a half-charred body roaring against the abuse. 

Suddenly the pain of the flames don't even compare to the agony of watching his family fall helpless prey to unrelenting fire, and just as Stiles tries to fight through the fire that's tearing at his skin and his very insides, the walls crackle and a scorched chunk of roof tumbles in his way, waking him up.

He always wakes up sweating, skin hot like he's been standing in a fireplace, and when he pats down his skin half expecting to find seared flakes of skin and singed fabric where his shirt should be, he feels nothing but smooth, undisturbed flesh and snaps back to reality. For a second he swears there's a dark figure in the shape of a man hiding in the shadows at the foot of his bed, but then he blinks and sits up and the shadows are nothing but the dark shapes of his furniture sitting motionlessly in the corners. 

 

\--

 

Stiles' dreams start changing. The fires go away, the lingering heat searing his skin dissolving into a raggedy mattress. The world is brown and smells of dusty carpets and the roof stretches into the heavens, bright light piercing through a shaky ceiling. It's the aftermath, the repercussions of the fire surrounding him as singed floorboards and smoky walls. Stiles turns endlessly on the mattress in these dreams, pushing his face into the cotton to escape the light filtering through the broken roof in order to find the darkness that lures him into sleep.

The darkness doesn't come, and neither does sleep. It tickles at his eyes and pulls them closed, pushing a haze of exhaustion over his vision like a fuzzy curtain, but his body won't succumb to the idea of slumber. Then there's a body leaning over his, soft and quiet like a ghost in the night, and Stiles reaches out to it. His hands reach warm flesh, an arm, maybe a shoulder, and then there's a hot breath in his ear that makes him shiver toward it. Suddenly the room's cold and the only warmth is emanating from the body heat lingering over him, and Stiles tangles his hands in wispy fabric to pull it closer.

"Let me touch you," the voice says, a soft hiss of temptation in his ear and a sharp claw brushing down his cheekbone.

"I want you to," Stiles says in response. "Just one night."

"Just once," the voice agrees, silken and familiar, and Stiles feels a hand on his stomach that electrifies every nerve. He tries to open his eyes to identify the man, but the want for sleep tugs them shut, so Stiles burrows himself into the body and breathes in at the crook of his shoulder. It smells like comfort, like he's spent days breathing him in, a hint of minty aftershave, and Stiles tries to place it.

He convinces himself to open his eyes and wrenches them open, and there above him are red eyes and sharp teeth, and Stiles starts laughing because he's never felt safer.

On those nights, he wakes up in layers of sweat as well, but for entirely different reasons.

 

\--

 

Stiles may not have superhuman strength or unmatchable reflexes, but he does have a car, a super power of his own that is more than most members of Derek's pack can say for themselves. It doesn't, however, mean he gets to engage in car chases and thrilling racing through the forest. It means he's responsible for running out to grab Burger King when Scott whines about being hungry after being forced to help Deaton, Derek, and the rest of the werewolves that trail after Derek like lost ducks come up with viable protections against the alpha pack. He grumbles about being made the veritable busboy of the group when he has other skills that are being blatantly ignored for the whole ride over to the nearest fast food drive through and has to rattle over a laundry list of orders.

He comes back just in time for lunch, letting himself into the Hale House with a bag the size of his torso that attracts everybody like vultures to exposed meat.

"Thank you, Stiles," Stiles drawls over the blatant lack of verbalized appreciation while Scott stuffs his face with a hamburger like he hasn't seen food in days. "You're welcome, everybody. No problem."

Scott gives him an apologetic shrug and Derek doesn't even seem to be listening as he goes to town on a handful of onion rings. It's nice to see people like Derek give so much passion to something that isn't exercise or survival, even if it something as trivial as greasy food valued at about ten cents.

Twenty minutes later, Stiles is sitting cross-legged on the sturdiest floorboard he trusts with his weight picking at his tater tots while Peter is still working away at a milkshake that he demanded to be supersized. He doesn't know why they're sitting in the same corner when he started lunch sitting next to Scott sharing Deaton's information and planning their next _Call of Duty_ marathon to balance out the seriousness of their lives with some light-hearted levity now and again, but now they're squatting in the corner together while Peter watches Stiles pop tater tots into his mouth like it's quality television.

"You remembered I like whipped cream," Peter says around his straw with an impressed smile.

"With all that froufrou you added to your last drink it was pretty hard to forget," Stiles says with a tone that he hopes conveys his judgment. "Kind of takes away from all that mystery and danger that surrounds you."

Peter smirks. "Mysterious and dangerous. Fairly close to dark and handsome," he says with a satisfied quirk to his lips that Stiles very much wants to wipe off. Several methods flit through his brain and Stiles stomps them all to an early death. "I like to surprise you, Stiles."

"That's all right," Stiles assures him, licking the salt off his thumb when he reaches the bottom of his carton. He's a huge hypocrite considering that if he ever saw his father smacking his lips after digging the leftover salt out of the bottom of his bag of fast food he'd never bring him MacDonalds again. "You surprised me enough when you were still the big bad alpha and we played hide and seek tag in my school in the middle of the night."

Peter looks at him like it was in poor taste to bring back old grievances, but Stiles feels completely justified in throwing that in his face when he almost pissed his pants that night, fully convinced he would be brutally murdered in his high school and Scott would forget to put something comedic on his gravestone. Stiles isn't entirely buying the make over from the grave story in which Peter died, went to therapy, and came back to life in the ashes as a renewed person lacking all thirst for blood.

"Are you scared of me?" Peter asks, and the look on his face makes it seem like he's expecting Stiles' heartbeat to betray him when he denies it.

"I'm not scared of the guy who asks for extra whip," Stiles says, and definitely feels like his wit has secured him the upper hand for the moment until Peter drops his drink and crawls over to him. He looks like a predator, eyes suggestive and mouth open, and for a second Stiles thinks he sees a flash of fangs before Peter crowds up in his personal space and grabs his wrist and leads it to his mouth.

He half expects a bite, even if it's pointless considering that Peter's no longer the alpha and lacks the ability to threaten Stiles with a transformative bite, as if his only goal is to assert his dominance, and Stiles' instinct tells him to yank his forearm back into safety. His curiosity overrides his better judgement and watches as Peter stares directly at him, not breaking eye contact as he lowers his mouth to his forearm. He trails it up his arm to his wrist, lower lip catching on the skin, and Stiles feels his heartbeat multiply and chest heave at their proximity for a reason entirely different from fear and fright. Their legs brush as Peter pushes himself closer, a soft noise escaping his throat as his mouth stops its journey at Stiles' wrist and he pins his arm against the wall over his head, maintaining eye contact in a way that should creep Stiles out but only enamors him for a few unbroken seconds.

"What are you doing?" Stiles whispers because anything louder would feel too disruptive for their propinquity. Peter's a centimeter away from his face, all sense of smug composure gone and replaced with a gentle fascination as his free hand slides down Stiles' chin and brushes over the skin there, and then suddenly they're no longer a breath and a second away and Peter's arching over him to where he's pinning his arm onto the wall and is fastening his mouth over his wrist.

For that second, Stiles does expect teeth, a quick breaking of flesh and his blood to dribble down Peter's chin, but Peter never bites. He licks over his pulse and starts sucking, a soft sucking like he's trying to coax his heartbeat out of his wrist and onto his tongue, and it doesn't matter how weird it is because it feels good and makes him slump against the wall even if he doesn't understand why and it's causing his heartbeat to jump to dangerously high levels. Peter grips his wrist tighter and nips, teeth scraping and never sinking into flesh as he brings blood to the surface right under the skin and soothes every careful bite with his tongue, mouth dragging over what has to be the meanest, darkest hickey Stiles has ever had the pleasure to be involved in. Peter doesn't quit early, giving it his all to make sure he doesn't fail in bringing all the mottled colors a bruise has to offer onto Stiles' skin, mouth sucking, lapping, licking, and tasting his flesh like the salty skin there is addictive. He pulls away only when he's satisfied with his work, tongue tracing the line of a neat circle dotted onto Stiles' wrist that's wet with saliva and freshly reddened into a mark, pulling away and licking his lips.

Stiles drops his arm from where it's held over his head when he realizes that Peter's fingers aren't holding him captive against the wall anymore, staring in awe at the perfect dot marked into his skin. It goes deep, already morphing into a shade of dark purple, and Stiles can imagine it sticking around for weeks without signs of fading. He should be punching Peter in the throat right about now, because whatever that was certainly wasn't appropriate behavior to exhibit on a minor, but his wrist is tingling in a way that seems to pump through his very nerves and Stiles can't find himself to complain. He rubs his thumb over the blemish where the memory of Peter's mouth lingers on his skin.

"What was that?" Stiles asks. Peter's mouth looked pale before, frozen from his iced milkshake, but now it looks swollen and pink like all lips do after a thorough make out session or after delivering a class A hickey.

"My mark," Peter says like it's just that simple, and Stiles doesn't know if he's claiming ownership or just fucking with Stiles' head, but before he can jumble questions together Peter's getting up, brushing the dust off his pants, and meandering outside to see if Derek needs help.

"What the fuck," Stiles asks dazedly to the empty room at large, and nobody has the decency to answer.

 

\--

 

Stiles is sitting in his bed pretending to study for the math test that's looming ever closer but is still startlingly low on his list of priorities, staring at his notes without actually reading them and getting continuously distracted by the sound of a squirrel chittering outside of his window. His dad's snoring a room away, the steady rumbling sounds encouraging him to forget studying and instead make himself a hot pocket as a midnight snack. It sounds like a much better idea than trying to learn logarithms in under ten minutes since all it's done for him is giving him a throbbing headache. Hot pockets could fill his stomach with delicious microwavable goodness. Stiles tries to shake all thoughts of food from his head and tries once again to fruitlessly focus on the math in front of him.

_Logarithms, unlike the natural log e, always have a base of 10 unless stated otherwise. When a log has a base that differs, one must use the "change of base formula,"_ Stiles' math textbook says. It really needs to learn how to use a literary hook or some engaging rhetorical devices.

Outside, the squirrel scampers through a few bushes, drawing Stiles' attention away from his textbook once more. The squirrel's been here all summer and Stiles is no longer amused.

_Logarithms, unlike the natural log e, always have a base of 10 unless stated otherwise. When a log has a base that—_

Stiles shifts, wrist grazing against the pages. The touch sparks a soreness in his skin, reminding him of the bruise there. He brushes a thumb over the purpled flesh and lingers over the red imprint of a bite mark. Werewolves are weird, Stiles thinks, and he wishes it would be that simple and that easy to write off. His eyes flicker back to his book.

_Logarithms, unlike the natural log e—_

His phone rings, a loud and shrill noise in the middle of the silent air, and Stiles picks it up partly to quiet the ringing and partly because he welcomes the distraction from the endless numbers of mind-numbing math staring at him expectantly from his textbook.

"Hello?"

"Didn't think you'd pick up," Peter's pleased voice says. 

"Shouldn't you be in bed, old man?" Stiles says idly, checking the clock on his nightstand. He's no longer surprised or all that offended that Peter's added himself to his contacts and has taken a liking to calling him frequently just for kicks. Stiles doesn't pick up most of the time, but his curiosity does stretch more than his self-restraint does when it comes to listening to the voicemails he leaves.

"I'm a creature of the night," Peter sasses without missing a beat, and then he pauses. "Did I scare you off?"

Stiles looks down at his wrist again, the mottled mark a souvenir of his last visit to the Hale house, and is only sightly annoyed that Peter's so comfortable being blunt. The mark's nearly a perfect circle, a pretty _o_ the shape of an insistent mouth curled over his wrist made purple and red with the help of teeth and tongue, and Stiles remembers exactly what it felt like to have Peter guide his arm to his mouth.

"Weren't you _trying_ to scare me off?"

"You must see me as a horribly big bad wolf," Peter says. "I'm trying the opposite."

"The opposite?"

"Is it still there?" Peter says abruptly after a beat, and Stiles could scream at how elusive he's being about the subject even if Stiles doesn't want to hear it said out loud. "The spot?"

Stiles looks at it again, a dark mark he'll be covering with sleeves for a while. "It's not going anywhere soon."

"Do you remember what my mouth felt like?" Peter asks. He sounds different, imperceptibly more breathless than a second before like he's keeping a part of himself at bay, the part of himself he struggles to control. Stiles feels something thrum through him like adrenaline, something reckless that wants to break the speed limit and test the waters, and he feels the intense urge to lure that side of Peter out for Stiles to feast on. He presses his lips to his wrist, planting an open-mouthed kiss on the spot Peter's mouth touched not long ago in a poor attempt to replicate the feeling of Peter's teeth scraping over vulnerable skin.

"Yeah," Stiles breathes into the phone.

"Did you like it?"

" _Yeah_ ," Stiles says. His legs are tingling and all of hose images his brain created in the shower come streaming back. His dad's one room away and he's here getting aroused at the sound of Peter's ragged breaths over the line. "Peter, my dad—"

"He won't hear you," Peter says instantly. "Tell me what my mouth felt like, Stiles."

"Warm," Stiles breathes out in a rush, like if he hesitates the spell of heavy arousal between them will be broken, and god, this is really happening. He drags his nails up his legs, bunching up the fabric on his thighs to occupy his hands as he cups the phone between his ear and his shoulder. He can't touch himself, he won't. "God, really good."

"Do you want my mouth other places too?"

"Like where?" Stiles' mouth asks without permission. He's provoking Peter, prodding at the dormant bear, playing with the proverbial fire, the same fire that flits through his dreams. Peter exhales on the other end like he's got Stiles right where he wants him.

"Like your cock," Peter says slowly. "Or the spot behind your ear. Or the underside of your knee. Or your hips, I bet they'd shake under my tongue, wouldn't they?"

He paints the picture perfectly, so well that Stiles can see it in his mind's eye, the way Peter would slither down his torso and pin down his wrists and nip at the skin of his hipbone until the flesh would break with tiny drops of blood that Peter would lap up with an eager tongue. He can imagine the pain, sharp like tiny needles that pierce the skin before they give way to the pleasure of a warm, wet mouth fastening over the hurt. Then his lips would trail down his thigh, hiccup over his cock even though Stiles would keen and rock his hips forward because Peter would be a tease, and then slide down to the soft spot under his knee. He'd bite there too, softer this time, pushing forward his legs until there'd be nothing to hide and Stiles would be fisting the sheets and sobbing into his pillow.

"Are you thinking about it?" Peter asks when Stiles doesn't answer, voice losing its bravado in favor of the raw hoarseness of arousal. Stiles loves the way it bites at his voice, the way it roughens it and takes away all of the smug fortitude to make room for the uninhibited animalism. 

"Yeah. Thinking that you'd probably tease me," Stiles says around a throaty laugh that rings loudly through the night. His dick is straining against his pants and he gives in to the urge to palm himself through the fabric. "I bet you'd want to hear me beg."

"Mmmm, I would," Peter says. His voice is low and smooth and soothes any qualms Stiles has about having phone sex with Peter Hale. He can't think about it too hard, so he closes his eyes, squeezes the outline of his dick through his pants, and gives himself over to Peter's words. "I'd like that a lot. That pretty mouth begging me to let you ride me and the way you'd sink down my cock when I'd finally say yes. Have you ever been fucked, Stiles?"

"No," Stiles says, his dick jumping in his grip at the words. The fabric feels like an obstacle now, keeping him restrained from properly touching himself, and he throws caution to the wind as he sticks his hand in his boxers and strokes himself. "Why, you gotta thing for virgins?"

"Not exactly. I do have a thing for hyperactive seventeen-year-old boys with a propensity to chase trouble, though," Peter says. He laughs, but it sounds breathless like he's touching himself as well, a rustling of fabric coming through the receiver that Stiles hopes is the sound of Peter shucking off his pants. "Touch yourself."

"I am," Stiles admits, so easily that he feels a blush creep up his neck as his shame rolls out the door. He squeezes his length, mouth falling open on a soft gasp as he leans his head against the headboard and speeds up the rhythm of his fingers. "Are you?"

"Yes," Peter says. "Tell me how you're touching yourself."

"So _demanding_ ," Stiles huffs, but he complies anyway. "Stroking my dick, feels good."

"Are you pretending it's me?"

"Can't. Feels too much like my hand," Stiles says, and he actually wishes it didn't. It feels familiar, the same hand he's been using for years in bathrooms and late at night in his bed when his father wasn't home, and he aches for the touch of an unexpected palm and deft fingers that leave him gasping and panting. His precome slicks the way for his hand, sliding along his palm at a faster pace, and Stiles feels a groan escape his mouth that he never intended to let out. Peter moans in response, like the mere sound of Stiles' pleasure is enough to push him closer to the edge.

"Go lower. Touch your hole," Peter tells him. Stiles has never fingered himself, only brushed over the area delicately in the shower and left it alone, but now that he's imagining what it would feel like to have fingers twist inside him, prepping him for more and then fucking him in earnest, the idea is exciting and rebellious. He bets Peter can feel the way his heartbeat thumps through his pulse at a hundred miles an hour as he bites his lip and lets go of his dick and presses his thumb against his entrance, puckered and willing. He lets his finger gently prod and push at the dry flesh there, urging him to grab the lube from his nightstand. He likes using it to slick the way for his hand now and again, but he's never been more grateful for it than now.

"What was that?" Peter asks at the sound of the cap flicking open.

"Lube. Too tight," Stiles answers, cupping the phone on his shoulder as he squeezes a few cold drops on his fingers. His dick is practically begging for attention and Stiles groans when his fingers brush it as he heads lower and rubs the lube into his entrance. It's tight, untouched and virginal, and Stiles tries his best to relax as he eases in a fingertip. It's odd, a strange type of intrusion he's never felt before, and he feels himself clench on his finger as he works in his lube-slicked finger.

"Can imagine what your ass looks like right now as you finger yourself. All pink and swollen and ready to be fucked," Peter murmurs. "Tell me what you're feeling."

"So weird," Stiles says honestly, leaning against the pillows as he slides in his finger and gently pulls it back out before pushing back in. The rhythm makes his stomach flop and his dick jump, a strange pleasure that courses through him like jolts of electricity. He imagines Peter doing this for him, kneeling in between the V of his legs and mouthing at his balls while he scissors his fingers inside him, and lolls his head to the side with a soft moan. "God, Peter, want you to touch me."

"God yes," Peter breathes in response, and his breathing has picked up like maybe the tempo of his stoking has increased. Stiles can imagine him, hunched over his bed with his hand on his cock as he listens to Stiles finger himself over the phone. God, this is so fucked up and it still manages to turn Stiles on beyond belief. "I'd let you suck my cock and get it all ready for your hole and then I'd return the favor and take you all the way to my throat."

Stiles keens and pushes in his finger harder. Peter's talking about stuff that he's only ever seen scrawled on bathroom stalls or heard about from porn, things that he's warned away from for the sake of his health and sanity. All of Peter is something to be warned away from, the kind of man that kids were told to avoid eye contact with and not get in the van with because of the neon signs spelling out _danger, danger_ pointing in his direction. Maybe Stiles really does like to chase trouble.

"Probably shouldn't want this so much," Stiles grits out while he builds up a rhythm with his finger that has his hips rolling into his thrusts. He pushes in another finger alongside his first, all decency abandoned as he lets the moans tumble unabashedly from his throat. Peter seems to eat them up, answering each with groans and growls of his own, and all Stiles wants is to feel Peter's hands snake their way down his body and his tongue trace lines up his stomach that has Stiles undone underneath him. "I just—I just keep thinking about you and your—your _mouth_ —"

Stiles' voice leaves him as his fingers stutter deeper and leave him blinking away stars. Peter growls like Stiles has finally broken through and Peter's back to his primordial, wolfish self that goes after prey and hunts down its victims, like Stiles manages to expose that hidden, dangerous side of him that Peter tries desperately to keep at bay. Stiles can imagine it, the way he'd be gripping his thighs and his eyes would flash blue when he pushes into Stiles and Stiles would grab him by the hair and ask if that's the best he can do.

"Are you close, Stiles? Are you thinking about how I'd fuck you over your mattress until you wouldn't be to walk for days and how I'd lick my come from your hole?" Peter rasps.

"Yes, _yes_ , god, yes," Stiles rambles breathlessly, and he slips his fingers from his hole to thumb at the head of his dick, and that's when he comes, with the image of Peter's hands roaming over his ass and his tongue curled into his entrance vivid in his mind.

He swears he blacks out for a second, just laying limply against his bed and blinking away the lights out of his eyes while he vaguely takes in the sound of Peter panting closer and closer to his own orgasm over the phone. He's only halfway coherent until he hears the low, rumbling groan of Peter coming hit him in the ear, the kind of sinful noise he wants to record and listen to over and over and over again. It's like when he masturbated to the thought of Peter pushing him against the tiles in the shower except this time it's only Peter's body that's missing, his voice intimately connected to Stiles and actively aware of the fact that he just jacked off in the middle of the night to the thought of him.

"It only would have been better," Peter says after the oxygen comes back to his lungs, "if you would have been here for me to touch."

"Uh huh," Stiles agrees lazily, but when the statement hits him he feels a beat of fear hit him like an unexpected wallop to the head. He just masturbated with Peter over the phone, serial killer werewolf Peter, and here he is sitting in a pool of his own come that's rapidly becoming an uncomfortable wetness gathering in his boxers. The lube is laying open as a blaring reminder of what he's just done along with the sound of Peter's heavy breathing from the phone, and it's all too much to process, mostly the fact that yes, he wants to let Peter fuck him senseless and yes, he told him so.

"Are you alive?" Peter asks when the silence isn't broken.

"I have to go," is all Stiles says, and with that he hangs up and drops the phone like it's an infectious disease that's threatening to crawl up his arm. His whole body is still buzzing with the force of his orgasm and his hole is still throbbing with the memory of what it felt like to have his fingers thrust in and out formerly untouched territory, and all of this would have been _fine_ if only he had been thinking of Lydia or that nameless waitress with the unbelievable chest from a few months ago or anybody that wasn't _Peter Hale_.

He shifts on the bed and feels his come start to dry on his thighs and into the fabric of his underwear, an unpleasant prospect, while the smell of sex lingers like an unspoken accusation in the air.

Now he has an existential and psychological crisis to deal with because he's hot for a creepy fully grown man, two a.m. laundry to do in silence to not alert his blissfully slumbering father, and unfinished math homework still stubbornly waiting for him. His life sucks.

 

\--

 

That night, when he's sitting on top of the churning washing machine while his boxers and his mattress cover tumble through soapy water and almost falls asleep to the sound of the water crashing around the machine like beach waves when the tide comes in, he deletes Peter out of his phone.

The next morning, he gets a text from an unknown number whose vernacular highly resembles Peter plus his propensity for leaving periods off the ends of sentences. It makes Stiles vaguely disgusted with himself that he recognizes Peter's texts just from the way he words sentences.

Two hours later he programs Peter back into his contacts.

 

\--

 

Condoms. On his dresser. That are definitely not his.

_Condoms_.

Stiles stares at them. He's too embarrassed to buy condoms from convenience stores, the cashiers always old ladies that have connections to his father that never fail to give him the stink eye just because he's buying lotion. He's also not delusional, and he knows perfectly well that the day he wears condoms on him at all times is when he'll never, ever have sex because life's funny that way. He's a junior now and the most a girl looks at him is to ask him to pass back the papers or what he got for number sixteen on last night's homework, so sexual safety doesn't exactly seem like a necessary worry in his life at the moment.

Somebody, however, seems to think that it's imperative for him to have be aware, someone who's sneaked in and out like a ghost or the condom fairy of safe sex. Stiles has a pretty good idea of who someone is.

He picks the box up warily, half expecting it to combust there in his grip, but it doesn't. It's a twelve pack, and Stiles can think of at least twelve different ways to use condoms all in one evening if he brainstorms hard enough. There's a potentially crazy night staring at him from this box, the very symbolic solidification of temptation. He opens the box and slips out one tiny foil square, feeling it with his thumb and wondering if he'll be using this anytime soon. Do werewolves even need condoms?

_Woah_. Did he just assume that he'd be having sex with a werewolf? More accurately, losing his virginity with a werewolf? When did he make that jump to imagining what it would feel like to be pounded into next week into assuming it would turn into a reality?

Stiles stuffs the condom back into the box. On the left, his window's open, a soft breeze wafting inside that ripples the trees, the smoking gun of an otherwise perfect crime scene, and Stiles only knows about three people who are perpetually afraid of using the front door.

 

\--

 

Stiles hadn't been looking forward to looking Peter in the eye again after the last thing he said to him was the sound of him coming to the encouragement of Peter's dirty talk over the phone, and that's probably why he unwillingly runs into him after three days of steadfast avoiding. It was a good effort, but the universe loves laughing at him panicking in pressured situations too much for it to last.

It happens at the grocery store, which horrifies Stiles as much as it relieves him that they're in public. He wasn't going to ignore Peter forever, just wait until the memory of him telling Stiles how much he fantasizes about his ass fades away from his brain. He's grabbing toilet paper and some frozen meals when he sees Peter, bent over the green beans like he has any use for frozen beans whatsoever like an actual, functional suburban guy shopping to restock the kitchen. It's as odd as it is petrifying, especially when the first thing Stiles thinks upon seeing his ass bend over the vegetable section is that there's still condoms sitting hidden in his sock drawer in shame probably placed there by the very man he's looking at.

He considers running and booking it for the bakery section but then Peter looks up and catches his eye and all thoughts of escape are wiped cruelly from his mind. There goes that plan if Stiles wants to keep what's left of his dignity.

"Stiles," Peter says cordially, coming up to him like they're neighbors who share the same mailbox.

"Peter," Stiles replies. "Didn't take you as a grocery shopping kind of guy."

Peter gives him a sarcastic grin as a response. "The deep dark lairs I usually shop at don't have green beans." He waves the aforementioned beans before dumping them in his cart.

Stiles rolls his eyes and refrains from moving away from what has become their habitual banter when Peter leans in and crowds in his personal space. To the unknowing shopper passing by, they must look like quite the genial pair, two old friends meeting by a happy chance in the nearest supermarket, except Stiles can feel Peter's breath on his ear and catalogues every light touch his fingertips make as they graze Stiles' elbow.

"I expected better respect for security from the sheriff's son," Peter whispers. "Like locked windows."

"Yeah, all sorts of dangerous people could waltz in," Stiles says. Peter's close, close enough for Stiles to take in all of the details of his face, from the soft lines of his wrinkles to the dots of stubble to the total lack of burns that should be littered up his cheek. "But those are the type of people who don't mind breaking in if the window's locked anyway."

Peter chuckles, hand reaching out of nowhere to grab Stiles' forearm where the residue of Peter's hickey is faded on his wrist as a paling sour green mark that's losing its luster. He frowns at it like he's dissatisfied with its permanence, and then, right next to the frozen bags of beans and the brussel sprouts and the corn, Peter proceeds to suck it back into place.

Stiles gasps and struggles at the thought of judgmental shoppers side-eyeing their public indecency, but Peter doesn't let him twist away. He grips more tightly, blunt nails making crescent marks in Stiles' skin, and bites down more viciously than last time as his teeth and tongue work in rough tandem. Stiles' fingers curl into his palm at the sensation, but then Peter's placing a single open-mouthed kiss on his wrist, spot freshly renewed, and releases his arm.

"Couldn't let it fade, now could I?" Peter asks him with a softness that's almost eerie as he licks his lips like the taste of Stiles' skin is still there. Stiles watches, stunned and perplexed and inexplicably aroused, as Peter runs his thumb over the mark as if to test its durability. His lips are slick with wetness and tinged a gentle pink that Stiles feels the ineffable urge to kiss. He wants to kiss him, right here in public against the glass refrigerators, more than he's ever wanted anything else.

"I don't trust you," is what Stiles says instead.

Peter huffs out a bark of laughter like he actually knows as well just how fucked up this is, and leans in closer again. There's something so horribly addictive about the soft way he speaks and the way he draws in his shoulders that Stiles leans in to hear something he could've heard from three feet away.

"I don't trust me either," Peter says. Stiles swears he sees a flash of fang in his mouth when he parts his lips, "considering all the things I wanted to do to you."

His eyes flicker down to Stiles' lips and his hand blankets Stiles' where it's gripping, white-knuckled, on his cart. Stiles swallows and Peter follows the movement with a discreet flicker of his eyes down to his throat. All of Stiles should feel preyed upon by now, like the boy wearing all red in a fenced pen with a bull, but instead he just feels the same jolt of electricity awakening his nerves that always sets fire to his veins when Peter's near. He wants to kiss him, wants to suck on his tongue and bite away all those lewd grins and idle snark, but then Stiles' neighbor, the sweet lady with the bundt cake obsession, strolls by with a curious glance at the exchange between the two of them and Stiles remembers who the hell he's standing nose-to-nose to.

And honestly, what the fuck is his problem? Peter's like the toddler you play peekaboo with and then he bites at your fingers, and Stiles is the parent who never learns. He takes a broad step away from Peter and watches as his hands clench into fists.

"Jesus Christ, Peter, this is not happening," Stiles says to the peas. In his peripherals, he spies Peter's fists tighten by his side, and he wonders if it was beneficially wise to have this conversation in public. "This cat and mouse game has got to stop. Dude, you're like twice my age and you creep me out."

Peter looks speechless and constipated like a child denied candy. He clearly doesn't take rejection lightly, and Stiles grabs his cart just to put something solid between them as a buffer. Stiles yanks his sleeve over his marked wrist and watches as Peter's eyes follow the movement.

"Funny," Peter spits out. "You know what I just heard?"

"Come, on, man—"

"You lying. Again," he says around a wry smile. It really does creep Stiles out, like they're back on the lacrosse field and Peter's mind is concentrated solely on revenge, and it makes him realize that maybe Peter really has been improving and turning into somebody less like the blood-driven murderer he was before until Stiles decided to take away his entertainment and reverse some of that progress. "What do you have against giving in to what you want?"

"How do you know so well what I want?"

"I can smell it on you," Peter growls, twitching like he's a moment away from pushing Stiles' cart into the glass and throwing the shards into the air, so Stiles takes another step back and wrenches his cart in the opposite direction to symbol his exit. A part of him feels like he's leaving a veritable time bomb standing in Peter's coat as the aftermath of their squabble, destined to go off and ruin an unsuspecting person's day because Stiles riled up a man with a history of unstable tendencies and left him standing alone in the vegetable department like an idiot.

He knows what they say—keep your friends close and your enemies closer—but Stiles thinks he got a little too close.

 

\--

 

Stiles starts avoiding Peter, even when he goes to help Derek and he sees Peter staring holes in his skull from the corner. Stiles realizes a little belatedly that he might be slightly miffed about the grocery store incident, and Stiles would be happy to write off the entire thing as a few confusing and alarming encounters that dilly-dallyed between them for a few months even though he knows perfectly well from Peter's personality alone that it won't be smoothing over so easily.

He actually thinks that he's making progress on detaching himself from the indescribable relationship the two of them have accidentally created, that is, until he comes home to see Peter lounging on his bed amid the dirty clothes and the wrinkles in the sheets fiddling with the box of condoms he effortlessly located in Stiles' drawer underneath three month's worth of socks. It's frustrating and irritating and like the rogue pet he can't shake from his heel, the bad penny that keeps showing up in his change over and over again, except it's _Peter Hale_ , the obstinate werewolf whose ass Stiles can't stop staring at even though he knows it's a bad idea, and the sight of him languidly sprawled over the bed is enough to break all of restraint that he's worked for weeks to build up.

God, he is so messed up. He'd be a therapist's ultimate dream, the way Stiles goes back and forth between his hormones and his better judgement and the way he desperately wants to pounce on top of Peter while he simultaneously wants to run away. Peter is an enigma, an oxymoron that draws him in like a Siren song and repels him like a bottled parasite better left untouched, and Stiles doesn't even think he can look at his face anymore without wanting to throw open the window and roar for relief. One day, one day, he will definitely regret all of this.

"You know," Peter drawls from the bed, unfolding his legs and staring at the back of a single foil condom. "Werewolves don't really even need condoms."

Stiles has had it, he has had _enough_. He's done with the games, the breaking and entering, the staring at Peter's distracting mouth and the blushing like a schoolgirl because of his sexual innuendos. He all but hurls his backpack across the room as Peter sets the condom aside and fixes him with a wolfish grin that Stiles wants to rip off his face. It's ironic, he bets, in some morbid way, that the serial killer is giving him serial killer tendencies.

"I'm going to _kill_ you," Stiles fumes, fisting his hands in his own hair, grumbling when it's too short to grasp onto. "You and your sexual comments and the way you keep staring at me and the way you mess with my head. God, you mess with my head!"

Peter looks surprised from where he's perched innocently on the mattress, like all of these accusations are news to him and that he's been the epitome of angelic behavior ever since he's crawled out of that grave like an undead king. Stiles throws the nearest pillow at him, which Peter doesn't even make the effort to catch because it's so pitiful. It hits him on the forehead and bounces off the bed.

"That was uncalled for," Peter says from the bed, fixing Stiles with an almost fatherly look of admonishment. No, he's not having it.

"Did you hear me? I want to kill you," Stiles grits out. "Do you think it's been funny, teasing me like this for weeks?"

Peter sits up, some of the languorousness of his position dwindling as he fixes Stiles with a perfectly unamused look. "All due respect, Stiles," he says, rather acidly. "I think you've been teasing me just as much."

That hits Stiles a little in the gut at the thought that yes, he's been encouraging all of this and yes, he's been feeding off the attention and the way Peter looks at him like he wants to eat him whole. They're the sort of looks that Stiles has been giving Lydia for years, except focused on _him_ , and of course it felt good to be wanted and desired, but Stiles isn't letting Peter turn this around on him. Peter's the one who started this chase.

"I never would've teased you if you hadn't teased me first," Stiles growls.

"You're circular logic is really quite endearing."

Stiles refrains from throwing the next pillow. Instead, he stomps over to the bed where Peter is still laying claim and leaving the scent of his minty aftershave all over the pillow and punches him right in the face.

It feels incredibly good, because Peter has deserved this for a long time. He knows Derek's already dealt out his fair bit of physical justice for his sister by whacking him around the house a bit, but this isn't for the murders or what he forced onto Scott or even the perpetual state of fear it put Stiles in during sophomore year. This is for his own personal suffering and sexual frustration.

His fist feels like it's the hand of retribution when he smacks it directly into Peter's jaw even if it ultimately ends up hurting his knuckles more than it does damage to Peter's face. It might be counterproductive to injure a werewolf, but he still feels the momentary pain and the blood still trickles down his chin as he cracks his jaw back into place, all sights and noises that are music to Stiles' ears. He deserves more than just one punch to the face.

Peter glares and spits blood out onto Stiles' carpet, which he'll get back at him for later when he forces Peter to scrub the red splotch out of his floor, smearing the blood off his mouth with his sleeve. He looks pissed and bloody and a little impressed as he stares up at Stiles, licking the remainder of the blood from his mouth, and then he yanks him down by the shirt and kisses him.

Peter tastes like blood, which is gross, but the kiss is everything Stiles has been denying himself for a while. He's been thinking about it, dreaming about it, wondering if it would ever live up to his expectations, and it _does_. Peter kisses with purpose and intent and intensity, the hands furled around Stiles' shirt not giving way for struggling as he wrenches Stiles onto the bed and pushes their mouths together. Kissing Peter is like sitting in a car when his favorite song comes on the radio and he turns up the volume so much it pounds through his entire body, Peter's tongue persuasive and his hands demanding.

_Tongue_? Stiles isn't even sure when that entered the equation, but then there's a soft tongue sliding over the parting of his lips aggressively requesting entrance and Stiles supposes that it may have been there all along. There's teeth nipping at the sensitive skin of Stiles' lower lip that dig in and bite his mouth red and angry, and Stiles won't let Peter domineer over him if he has anything to say about it. He grabs Peter by the hair, tugging at the sound of his answering growl, and pushes down into his mouth until Peter's pinned against the mattress. He has no idea how he ended up on top, but here he is, straddling Peter's hips and sliding their tongues together.

He pulls away to breathe, a dizziness already settling into his brain that's making the entire moment smell of lust, and _this_ is what it must feel like to have werewolf powers and to smell the very emotions lingering in the air, because Stiles is aware of every single hint of arousal hanging over them. Peter's mouth is red, red because of Stiles' work, and Stiles feels himself swell with pride at the way Peter's eyes are half-lidded and incredulous as he stares up at him and watches Stiles descend on his throat with his tongue. Stiles wants to impress, wants to shock and leave the body underneath his panting in submission, so he grips Peter by the hips and sucks spots into his neck. He tries valiantly, scraping teeth and sucking hard, but all of his work fades away moments after creation, Peter's subtle gasps the only proof that he had made marks at all. Peter goes for the element of surprise and grabs Stiles' ass, fingers digging into to the flesh there, and before Stiles has time to react he's being flipped over and is staring at the ceiling.

"Still want to kill me?" Peter says around a smug mouth. Everything about him looks disheveled and swollen and mussed with kisses, and despite how badly Stiles wants to roll away from all of this, his urge to pull Peter down on top of him to feel the hard line of his body pressed into his overwhelms any other options he's considering. He hooks a leg over Peter's hip—in for a penny—and arches his body up as best as he can to feel Peter's groin rut against his. 

"Yeah," Stiles says. "A lot."

"Then I suppose I'll have to change your mind," Peter says, pushing down his hips to give Stiles a taste of the erection tenting against his pants, and this is when Stiles first realizes that he's _hard_. They've been making out for five minutes and Stiles is already like an animal in heat, hormones running down to his groin and leaving his brain bloodless and dazed while Peter grinds their hips together in abandon. It's delicious friction that has Stiles cursing his pants and throwing his head back against the pillow. The line of his exposed throat is too much for Peter, who dips forward to run his mouth over his jugular and let his teeth graze over his pulse. A tongue darts out to lick the skin there to memorize the feeling of Stiles' pulse skyrocketing, and Stiles can do little else but grip Peter's shoulder and buck up for even more.

He didn't want it to be this easy. He wanted to be a challenge, to make Peter want to rip out his hair and dig his claws into his own flesh for relief, but when Stiles sees him looking down at Stiles' body laid out on the bed with wrinkled clothes and a debauched mouth, Peter's face hungry and ravenous like an unfed lion, Stiles thinks he probably succeeded. There's something beautiful about the way Stiles can bring Peter apart with the way he touches him, and sometimes, the way he _doesn't_ , but Stiles is sick of not touching, his hands ready to roam everything from the broad expanse of his shoulders to the small of his back. He doesn't ask, he just does, undressing Peter's shirt with impatient fingers that fumble through every button and don't relent until he's shirtless. Peter pushes him back against the mattress with a firm hand on his chest the moment he shrugs off his shirt.

"You too," Peter says, cocking his head to Stiles' chest and waiting for him to follow suit. Stiles would love to drag this out just to see Peter's face struggle to contain himself as Stiles turns unzipping into a slow, fine art, but his own erection is pushing against his boxers for relief and Peter's hands are twitching on his thighs like he's prepared to make all of his sexual fantasies turn into a mind-numbing reality the moment he gets naked. He yanks his sweatshirt off and his t-shirt follows dutifully as he tosses them onto the floor to find later when he cares about clothes—definitely not now—and all but crawls in Peter's lap as he reaches forward to squeeze a nipple and chuckle at Peter's answering growl.

"You can do better than this," Stiles murmurs with a grin into his ear, biting down on the lobe of his ear as their groins flit together and Peter grabs Stiles' hips hard enough to bruise. He's pretty sure this isn't the type of sex people have in high school—people probably turn off all the lights and fumble with the condom and get it over with and never speak again. There's no growling and excessive biting and there's certainly not any age differences, but here Stiles is defying all expectations as he lets Peter all but bodily manhandle him onto the pillow, pin his wrists down, and lick his way down his chest. Apparently provoking the werewolf was a tremendous idea if this is the sex fiend that it uncovered.

"I'll show you better," Peter murmurs atop his shoulder as he breathes over Stiles' left nipple and bites down. It stings and makes Stiles arch up, his hands going to smack Peter around the head for retaliation when he remembers that Peter's holding them down. His thumb presses into the mark on Stiles' wrist and he keens, the soreness morphing into a dull pain as Peter rubs over it with an insistent finger and makes a trail down Stiles' stomach with his tongue. He licks up the gathering of beads of sweat by his hips, mouth sucking mark after mark into his torso like he's trying to make a constellation out of hickeys to trace into connect-the-dot pictures later.

He goes all the way down to where the waistband of Stiles' pants sit, chin brushing over his erection as he idly outlines it through his pants with one hand after he releases his hold on Stiles' wrists. Stiles wants him to touch, wants him to grab and take what he wants, but when Peter looks up at him with dilated pupils and a parted mouth, he wants to kiss him and let their tongues tangle for hours. He wants many things, things that will take more than twenty-four hours, so he bucks his hips up to get the show started.

"Are you gonna touch me or what?" Stiles asks from where he's breathless at the top of the bed, every nerve of his body on fire after the way Peter's tongue delicately mapped out his torso.

"Not asking very nicely," Peter says with a cheeky grin that Stiles is determined to remove later. He crawls up from his spot between Stiles' thighs, one hand grabbing Stiles' wrists and pinning them both over his head as he looms over him. "You're missing the magic word."

"Are you kidding me?" Stiles grits out, wiggling against the confinement. Peter's strong and doesn't give up, the grip on his wrists tightening as he leans in to brush their lips together. He was right along; Peter's the insatiable tease, he's just helplessly along for the ride.

"I'd never kid," Peter says, deadly serious, and swipes his tongue over his lower lip.

" _Please_ ," Stiles gives in with a hard glare, and Peter lets go of his wrists and slithers a hand between their bodies to unbutton his jeans and stick his fingers into his boxers. He's personally ashamed of his own lack of restraint and pride, but he'd probably be much more ashamed if his dick wasn't shamelessly calling all the shots right now.

It feels like heaven pushed into his pants, Peter's fingers slow and deft up and down his cock while he watches with rapt attention how Stiles' face rides through the waves of his pleasure. It might be embarrassing how attentively he's watching how every gasp and whimper causes his eyes to flitter and his mouth to curve open, but Stiles goes for it in the heat of the moment and lets himself succumb to the feeling of a steady, firm hand gripping his length. Peter's hand is fresh and hot as he digs his fingertip into the slit and toys with the precome, smearing it over Stiles' shaft from the tip to the base.

"Did you think about me doing this, Stiles?" Peter asks in a low, entranced murmur, and when Stiles forms nothing but an incoherent hum in response he squeezes his cock to evoke a solid reply out of him. 

" _Hnnn_ , yeah. Thought about how your hands would feel. F-fuck, I did," Stiles pries his eyes open to sneak a glance at him. "You have a thing for dirty talk?"

"Maybe I just like watching your mouth move," Peter says, and then he's pushing his free thumb in Stiles' mouth and letting him lick over his fingerprint. Peter pushes all of Stiles' buttons, even ones he didn't know he had, and Stiles stutters his hips into Peter's hand to encourage him to speed up his strokes.

It then hits him that aside from a few discarded shirts, they're both still fully dressed. Stiles doesn't want to come like this, spurting into his pants and ultimately washing his boxers, especially if he never gets to catch a glance of what's under Peter's pants. He's been the victim of this game for too long and he's definitely ready to become the hunter to the unsuspecting deer.

"Stop," Stiles says, pushing Peter's hands away and trying his hardest not to whimper at the loss of contact. He sits up and shimmies forward until he's got Peter in a favorable position, finally ready to shock the smirk off his mouth with all the weapons at his disposal. There are a lot. 

He shuffles out of his pants and gives in to his perpetual desire to keep their mouths connected, and halfway through a truly filthy kiss Peter pulls back to whisper directly on his lips, "You can do better."

"Oh, it is _on_ ," Stiles whispers, and a moment before he from yanks Peter on top of him by the hair, Peter slips out of his own pants, shucks off his underwear in the same smooth motion, and crawls backward to lounge against the foot of the bed. 

"Come and get it," Peter challenges. God, he's really enjoying this now that Stiles isn't fighting his own code of ethics anymore. If he's being honest with himself, he knows that he tossed his morality out the window the moment his friend turned into a werewolf, so a little romp in the sheets with Peter Hale shouldn't make him go to hell any faster.

This is definitely the first time Stiles has had a naked man sitting in his bed. He's had some personal time with the sheets himself where it was nothing but his bare cock rutting up against soft cotton sheets, but now it's a dick that isn't his own and is leaking for attention. Maybe he should be freaking out, all things considered, all dicks aside simply because it's another person _willingly_ naked in his presence. On his bed, specifically, waiting to be ravished, not even a fleeting shirtlessness or a scramble to slide into lacrosse shorts in the locker room. All of it's intensely purposeful. Stiles jumps in head first, grabs his dick, and pushes their mouths together. 

"Fuck me," Stiles breathes out when their teeth clack together, and finally he manages to surprise the smug out of Peter Hale.

For about two seconds, anyway, and then Peter is forcibly pushing Stiles' underwear out of the way and palming the smooth skin of his ass and rubbing at his entrance. He looks driven by lust and all of the primordial forces that Stiles has managed to dig out underneath all of the polite cordiality and the interminable snark, and Stiles fumbles for his nightstand to grope for the lube and hand it over. Peter kisses him as a thorough reward for his preparation skills and instantly flicks the cap open, squeezing some over his fingers and sliding them over Stiles' entrance, back and forth, to slick the way.

"C'mon," Stiles whines, rutting against the touches.

"Did you do this on the phone," Peter asks, voice pitched low and reverent. "When I told you to touch your hole?"

"Yeah," Stiles breathes out. "Thought about your cock."

He squeezes Peter's cock for emphasis and watches as he growls in response, spurred on into sliding a lubed finger into his entrance. Stiles gasps at the familiar feeling, a curious intrusion that stings and arouses simultaneously, and he continues the rhythmic pumping of Peter's erection to encourage him. It works well, Peter bucking steadily into Stiles' grip while he twists his finger in deeper and slides in another. 

"So tight," Peter groans, biting on his lip. Stiles rubs his thumb over his mouth to relax the pressure of his teeth, Peter releasing his own lower lip in favor of sinking his teeth into the soft flesh of Stiles' neck. It hurts but takes the impact of the pain away from his ass as Peter scissors in a third finger and slides in deep to the knuckle. It makes him feel full and stretched and inexplicably ready to be fucked, so Stiles squeezes lube on his hands and proceeds to slick up Peter's length as a green light to charge ahead. 

"'M ready," Stiles moans, rocking on Peter's hips and curving into the abuse his mouth is biting into his neck, but Peter seizes Stiles by the hips to stall him.

"Not yet," he says, and it sounds like it takes all of his restraint not to throw Stiles on his back and pound him into oblivion. He slides his three fingers in and out in a bruising rhythm that leave Stiles panting and pushing into his rough thrusts, keening for more. He digs in his fingers, crooking one and grinning when Stiles feels him nudge his prostrate with a soft cry before slipping all the digits out. "Now I'll fuck you."

"Finally," Stiles says, kissing Peter hard to release some of the tension building up in his midsection. This isn't what he had in mind for his evening, or his day, or even his life, but he won't question the twists and turns that somehow decided to put a turned on werewolf in his bed, not when he's about to lose his virginity and be thoroughly fucked.

"You set the pace," Peter says. His eyes are closed like he's keeping flashes of blue at bay. "Or I'll end up hurting you."

He digs his thumb into Stiles' hipbone hard enough to bruise and Stiles concedes to his desire to take cautionary measures if only to keep from breaking any bones. He works the rest of the lube down to the base of Peter's cock until he's slick and ready, every touch evoking a soft hitch of breath in Peter's throat that Stiles takes personal pride in.

"You want me to ride you?" Stiles says, positioning himself over Peter's lap. The sight of Stiles' hole lined up expectantly with his dick seems to light a fire in the spark Peter was desperately trying to quell before, and without bothering to answer Peter grabs hold of Stiles' hips and yanks him down onto his cock.

It's a lot like ripping off a bandage, except it's his virginity that's suddenly out the window. It stings and aches in a way that lets Stiles know he'll be feeling the ghost of a cock inside himself for days, that the pain will be a lingering soreness tomorrow to remind him of what happened and not let him forget a moment of it. Stiles blinks away the dots of pain from his eyes and takes consolation in the fact that Peter's not giving in to the urge to thrust without reserve while he adjusts, even if Peter's hands are twitching up and down his back in an attempt to relax Stiles' muscles to hurry him along. Stiles does, because backing out is not an option, and he unclenches slowly until he can wiggle on top of Peter's hips. He's big and seems to pierce directly into Stiles, his cock a heavy weight his body fastens around, and Stiles exhales slowly to get accustomed to the foreign feeling that's nothing at all like three slender fingers twisting up into him. 

It feels like hours pass before Stiles finally feels his breathing calm him through the twinges of pain, Peter slipping two fingers in his mouth to distract him. Stiles twists his tongue around his knuckles, sucking lazily as he focuses on the salty taste of Peter's skin while he finally raises his hips and sinks back down again right before the tip of his length slips out.

Peter's answering groan is delightful, the soft, drawn out moan of a man denied a great urge for years, like there's nothing he's ever wanted as much as he wants to fuck Stiles and claim him for his own right now. The sound is addictive and Stiles makes it his mission to evoke more unrestricted whimpers out of him, so he swallows down on the last vestiges of pain tingling in his body and snaps his hips up and down in a slow and steady rhythm that has Peter growling in pleasure. The sound is animalistic and should scare Stiles, but all it does is urge him to go faster as Peter cants his hips up every time he slides smoothly down. The lube does its job well, decreasing the burn of skin-on-skin friction, nothing but Peter's slick cock pushing into him while Stiles groans at the feeling of his own erection sliding against Peter's stomach with every rise and fall of his hips.

His thighs are shaking from the effort, but Peter holds onto him by the ribs and helps him along each time he falters. It feels amazing, the pain and the pleasure mingling into a heady cocktail of sensations that have Stiles letting loose a litany of moans that Peter eats up one by one, and Stiles knows then and there that masturbation will never be enough again. From this point on, everything will have to measure up to this feeling, the feeling of Peter sliding into him and ramming over and over again into his prostate like he's been inside him before, knows all the curves of his body, and has memorized how every touch affects Stiles. It's like electricity jolting up his muscles and knocking his brain unconscious, and Stiles blinks away the stars each time he sinks down onto Peter's hips.

"Knew you'd feel good," Peter groans, and suddenly there are claws scraping down Stiles' back that are piercing skin and drawing tiny lines of blood in their wake. "Knew nothing would ever be as good as the sight of you bouncing on my dick."

Stiles groans and digs his nails into Peter's shoulders to stay grounded, the rhythm of his own hips jumbling the coherency of his thought process. Nobody told him that sex was going to shake the very axis the world turned on, and yet here he is, crying out each time Peter's length rams into his prostate and losing another shred of awareness of the reality around him as the world starts spinning. Peter dips forward and kisses him, hand gripping Stiles' neglected dick and jerking it to the same tempo of his hips, both their bodies perfectly in tandem for a few miraculous minutes. His back is burning where Peter's nails scratched lines down the skin and his hips are bruised with the way Peter's guiding them up and down, but Stiles couldn't care less as long as Peter continues twisting his wrist around Stiles' cock and fucking him into another dimension.

"Won't last," Stiles mumbles against the hot, wet pressure of Peter's parted lips pressed into his. A tongue swipes out to dip into Stiles' mouth and Stiles chases it, tangling a hand in Peter's hair and tugging as a warning. " _Peter_."

"Do it," Peter growls. A canine digs into his lower lip as he nips on the sensitive flesh of his mouth, and Stiles groans brokenly as Peter snaps his hips up and goes deeper. "Come. Come _now_."

He jacks Stiles off even faster along to the frenzied pace of his thrusts, the combination of his rough hands and his even rougher teeth urging Stiles to obey. He comes one thrust later and feels his entire body stutter through the jolts of his orgasm like he's standing under a bolt of lightning, and it's not at all like what his hand feels like when he's jerking off over the shower drain or what a few fingers in his ass feels like either, a completely unparalleled sensation that he'll never be able to put into words. His mouth falls open and his cheek lands on Peter's shoulder, his thighs shaking as he slides down again on Peter's still hard erection. Peter pushes him down on the mattress and suddenly he's staring at the ceiling while Peter's pushing up his legs from where he's gripping him under his knees and fucking him in a frenzy even more urgent than before, Stiles' body keening and groaning at every push. He arches into the hurried thrusts even as his cock softens and his muscles unclench, and Peter comes a minute later into him, a warmth pushing in that Stiles knows will be sticky and uncomfortable if he falls asleep like this.

Peter's breath takes a while to calm down again, his chest heaving as he pinches Stiles' hip to test his consciousness. He's close to falling into a deep slumber right there, but the pinch reminds him that falling asleep in a puddle of his own come and with Peter's trickling out of his entrance isn't the smartest plan. Stiles tries to sit up, and when his body protests, reduced to a pile of immovable satisfaction, he squeezes Peter's arm to enlist his help.

"Help clean," Stiles murmurs, and Peter seems to understand. He slides off the bed and putters about in the bathroom, coming back with a wet cloth feels like icy water when he presses it against Stiles' entrance to clean away his come. Stiles jolts on the sheets. "God! Couldn't you have warmed it up?"

"This was more fun," Peter murmurs, and how he manages to crack jokes when he has Stiles' come drying on his stomach and his dick is hanging out in the open, Stiles will never know. He waits for Peter to clean himself off before falling asleep just to make sure Peter doesn't take the opportunity to draw mustaches on Stiles' face in Sharpie, but if he's planning any shenanigans, the sight of Stiles sprawled in the nude on top of his sheets is enough to qualm them.

And then, the last thing Stiles remembers is Peter wrestling the blankets out from underneath him and coaxing him to the side of the bed to make room. He smells mint, the same aftershave that's been caught in his nose for months, and leans back against a warm chest.

"I don't regret it," Stiles slurs, and the confession even surprises himself. Peter mumbles something in response, something soft and content, but Stiles is already halfway asleep tucked against Peter's body with the smell of sex in the air lulling him into slumber.

 

\--

 

For about ten blissful hours, sex wears Stiles out enough to keep him dead to the world and sprawled half on top of Peter's unabashedly naked body for most of the night. He wakes up with the feeling of sticky legs and sun piercing through his eyelids, and when he turns on his lumpy mattress and blearily opens an eye, he sees Peter watching him from a propped up elbow like he's been awake for a while and didn't find it appropriate to nudge Stiles awake.

"Be more creepy," Stiles grumbles as he pries open one eye and clears the hoarse residue of sleep from his throat. "I dare you."

"That can be arranged," Peter says, slipping a hand around Stiles' back and cupping the curve of his ass. They're both still utterly naked under the sheets, bare chests brushing and Peter's thigh slipping between Stiles' legs as his fingers trail down the line of his ass and press against his swollen hole. Stiles jerks, the touch awakening him more than ten cups of coffee could have. He traces the rim of his hole with his fingertip as he leans in to push his mouth against Stiles', leaving Stiles shaking off his last clinging hopes of sleep and trying to rub his ass against Peter's touch to encourage him to slip in a finger or two. Instead, his hand stills and Stiles is left to glare at him to cut the teasing routine. Peter stares back.

"Well," Peter says, patting Stiles' ass. "Aren't you going to make me breakfast?"

Stiles rolls his eyes and pushes insistently at Peter's side until he tumbles gracelessly out of the bed and lands on the floor with a satisfying _thunk_. Stiles' ass is sore and every one of his limbs needs a warm shower, so he tosses aside the sheets and steps over where Peter's picking himself up from the floor to head for the bathroom, and that's when he first lays eyes on the veritable mauling victim that is his own body in the mirror.

There's bite mark after hickey littered onto his chest, some so prominent Stiles swears he can count the imprint of every single tooth embedded into his shoulder and his neck and his side, and when he twists around he swears at the sight of red scratch marks drawn down his back. He gingerly prods at a purpled mark on his neck and yelps at the soreness. If Peter's as fixated on these spots as much as he was on the one on Stiles' wrist, he'll be a walking watercolor painting for the rest of his life.

"Fuck," Stiles says in amazement as Peter comes stumbling into the bathroom after him. He wraps an arm around Stiles' stomach, fingers brushing over his work appreciatively as he idly yawns and sets his chin on Stiles' shoulder. Naturally, his entire body is creamy clear and unblemished. " _Fuck_."

"Maybe later," Peter says, fastening his mouth around Stiles' shoulder and setting to work about creating a new bruise while Stiles tries to shrug off his insistent mouth. Stiles thinks signing his signature on top of Stiles' forehead might send the same message. "I'm a little hungry."

Stiles huffs at that and wiggles his way out of Peter's grip, a success that's fleeting when a second later, Peter presses him into the counter and kisses him hard enough to cause all thoughts of showering and breakfast and even leaving his bed at all today to soar from his brain. The sink digs into the small of his back and Stiles struggles against the push into his back, and Peter wordlessly understands and lifts him onto the counter like he's moving about a pillow's weight. He kisses with a vigor that's been pleasantly quelled like a thirst that's been indulged, no longer a frenzy to undress fast and come fast, but rather with a lingering reverence that has Peter's hands roaming over every inch of Stiles' body in an effort for his fingers to memorize the blueprints of his body. It tickles and makes Stiles arch into him, up until there's a knock on his bedroom door and a voice filters through.

"Stiles?" the sheriff calls through the door. "Wake up, I just made bacon!"

"I could go for some bacon," Peter murmurs on Stiles' lips, dragging their mouths together, and Stiles all but has a panic attack pushing him off and scrambling off the counter.

"Be right there, dad, just gotta get dressed!" Stiles hollers back. His voice sounds a little squeaky like he's just been caught necking with the neighbor girl in the backyard's shed, and then Stiles proceeds to herd Peter out his window and pitch him out onto the lawn while mentally attempting to remember if there is a single turtleneck in his closet capable of hiding the amount of possessive marks scattered down his torso.

"Not exactly the morning after experience I had anticipated," Peter grumbles as he's ushered out the window, but he's smiling like watching Stiles interact with his father reminds him of his own rebellious high school experience. Stiles doesn't even want to know. Not now, anyway, when there's bacon downstairs and what he will firmly refer to as a mosquito feast if questioned to cover with a douchebag scarf.

"Maybe next time," Stiles says as he tosses Peter his clothing. Getting caught naked on his front lawn and being prosecuted for public indecency isn't any better than being found in his birthday suit on Stiles' bed. Maybe.

"Next time?" Peter parrots with a wicked smile as he shimmies into his boxers on the window sill. Seeing a grown man kneeling by his window, fully prepared to throw himself out and scale down the big oak tree by the driveway is one of the strangest thing Stiles has ever seen in his life.

"Maybe if you watch the teeth," Stiles says. "And wait for my ass to heal. Oh God, Scott's gonna kill me."

Peter smirks, reels him in for another kiss that morning breath doesn't even manage to ruin, and slides his thumb over the hickey deep on his wrist. "Derek's going to kill me."

"Lucky for you, you know how to come back to life," Stiles says, and then he pushes him out the window.

 

\--

 

One day later, Stiles gets a text message that vibrates against his ass in the middle of class. He sneaks it out of his pocket and reads, from Peter, _what are you wearing?_ and types back _five pairs of socks and a hula skirt, you?_

_Same_ , is Peter's response, and Stiles grins when he realizes that the games are far from over.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Head Games](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6355030) by [readbythilia (thilia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thilia/pseuds/readbythilia)




End file.
